Season's Greetings to all our Viewers.

There was once a beautiful Castle standing in a lovely garden with beautiful flowers and trees to shade and enhance it. She felt that she was a real Fairy Castle blessed by the fairies. The Faerie King came to visit and sometimes the spirits of King Arthur’s knights galloped up and down on their chargers.  Children lived there for hundreds and hundreds of years, playing in the gardens, riding their horses across the fields and running up and down the beautiful staircases inside the castle. She loved to think that fortune was smiling on her.

One day the family who lived in her invited 12 Good Spirits to give their blessing to her new Baron.  The Castle was delighted because she knew that he loved the place where he had played as a child. But only 11 Good Spirits turned up for the blessing. After it was over the twelfth spirit arrived, very angry because she had not been properly invited. Although she could not undo the blessings, she put a dreadful curse on the Castle saying that as soon as the Baron stopped living there bad things would happen.  The beautiful Castle was terrified because she knew that the Baron often travelled abroad on important work, but the servants comforted her and at first life carried on in the same way as before.

The Castle could feel that the Baron cared about her but she was afraid when she saw him getting older and older. By now his two children were all grown up and had gone away to London to live. They used to come back sometimes at the weekend to see him. Then a tragedy happened. The daughter went missing and was found drowned in the river in London. Later the Baron himself died. The Castle was heartbroken and felt that the curse was upon her. Only the son was left and sadly he didn’t really like the castle and didn’t want to live there. There were no other children left, only some grown up cousins and soon the Castle was left all alone. She knew she was beautiful and dignified but she felt the loneliness of her beautiful rooms with their beautiful window seats looking out over beautiful views and now empty of happy children’s laughter.

Then a big war started in many countries and lots of new knights driving lorries and marching about came to live there. The castle felt busy and happy at being useful again and the knights really enjoyed being in such a lovely place. They used to play music and sing and the castle was happy once again to see them having a good time. She forgot all about the curse.

Then one night when disaster struck she remembered it again. She knew that the old Baron hadn’t done any rewiring and when the old electric wiring caught fire she burnt right out, with all her lovely panelling cracked and twisted inside. The knights were very lucky to escape with their lives. After that no one had any money to build her up again. So she was sold to a farmer and became a bit of a nuisance – a ruin in the middle of a dairy farm. As the years went on, she still stood there, a ruin now but just as beautiful and dignified as ever, and got used to looking at the peaceful cows and watching the farmer working. But it was not the life that she had been used to before the curse was put on her.

One day some good fairies came to live in the nearby village, and noticed the sadness of the ruined Castle. They were determined to make her happy again and set up a fairy circle to find fairy gold to buy her. Everything started off well. The Castle liked people coming to visit and discussing the best way to save her. Little children wrote poems and sang songs in her honour and said they were really sad to see the how poorly she was. And by this time the curse had struck a cruel blow again. One of her lovely fairy towers had cracked horribly and fallen right down showing all the brick insides of the walls from long ago.

Now nasty miserable Goblins were feeding on the curse. They started to wring their hands, all doom and gloom, saying that there would never be enough gold to build up her walls again. They mocked the Good Fairies who were sure they could get gold from the GFF, the Good Fairies Fund. They knew that the poor people in the nearby towns were giving many gold pieces to the GFF every week. 

But it was no good. Two really Bad Fairies became totally submerged under the spell of the curse. They said that they were really frightened that they would have to pay for the magic potions for the ailing castle out of their own gold. They said that nobody could depend on the GFF. Then the curse got stronger and stronger and the Castle trembled with fear. When a pretend Baron Hardup suddenly appeared in a puff of smoke the Bad Fairies were extremely thankful, asked no questions and let him buy the Castle. The Good Fairies were very sad indeed. They tried all ways to persuade the Bad Fairies to support the Castle and to throw off the curse that the Bad Spirit had put on all those years ago. But it was too strong. The poor Castle grew more and more desperate as pieces of stone fell off the walls while Baron Hardup took his time to work out his rescue plan and the Bad Fairies did nothing to hurry him up. The Castle wept bitter tears when she discovered that he wanted to build horrid modern houses on her beautiful historic gardens and grounds where the children had once run about.

But some brave new knights, who felt really sorry for the beautiful castle, showed the people of the towns and the Good Fairies that their armour was indeed strong enough to repel the curse.  They understood the importance of her old history and they came riding along on their powerful chargers like the knights of old. They told Baron Hardup that he could not build houses on her historic land. Then the king of the knights told him exactly the same. The Baron tried to sell the castle but no-one would give him enough money to please him.

In the meantime, the castle wept tears of joy when all the people for miles around told her that they thought she was the most beautiful and important castle in all the land and that they wanted the Good Fairies to rescue her.

But alas and alack the curse struck back! The heart of Baron Hardup was not melted. He planted a thick hedge of thorns around the heartbroken Castle and she now watches him pacing about while she and her sister buildings fall to bits around her.

So come on Children - you must shout for a Fairy Godmother to appear soon in a flash of light with a Harry Potter magic wand to destroy the curse for ever and ever.  Tell the Fairy Godmother that the Good Fairies are waiting to chase away the curse of the Bad Spirit. Tell the Castle that soon the Pantomime will end and that the Good Fairies will break through the hedge of thorns and wake her up from her bad dream and she need not weep any more. Then the Good Fairies can look after her for ever and ever and she will welcome all the people who will come to admire her and fill the place with laughter again.